Fat Mother F-star-star-star-er

The war against Unwanted Roommate Jim is not over. The asshole's gotten bold: yesterday I had my friend Emily over, chatting and hanging out in broad daylight, and suddenly she looks over into my kitchen and squeaks.

"Oh my god — I just saw your mouse!"

I swore some and went over to check, but by then he'd slipped under the stove and out of sight. I set a trap and settled back down. We could hear him randomly chewing at the wall at intervals. We both agreed that he must have been really hungry, to so creep out in search of food at such a dangerous time.

This evening as I was settling down to knitting and the Facebooks, I heard movement and turned around just in time to see a fat brown mouse scurry across the main living area and into the kitchen. I followed him just quickly enough to see him slip under the fridge, where he promptly started up with the loud wall-chewing. Bastard.

Building manager has been notified, and will look into getting a handy man out at some point to move the fridge and patch up whatever hole is back there. Which means I have to clear the fridge out so that it's not impossible to move. Heavy thing is my fridge.

All I want to do is get my hands on that rodent and squeeze its eyeballs out. Animal rights be-damned.

In other news, apparently what I needed most to get out of my recent funk was a night of drinking. A lot of drinking. My company's Christmas party was Saturday night, at a Mexican restaurant with a karaoke stage in the back. I drank a lot of margaritas. I sang myself hoarse (even though the karaoke jockey cut me off for two of my songs!), and didn't end up with a hangover despite my best efforts. Good show. And now suddenly I'm feeling really good about myself. It's like magic, killing the sad brain cells.

Okay, enough talk. Time to get back to my knitting — I have a hat that's due Saturday night, and have to decide if I'm going to knit another thing to be due Sunday or if I'm just going to buy something nice for this person. Oh, and I guess at some point I should get some sleep, too.

Turtle Neck Seasoning

I am not intending to knock the amazing friends I have locally, but: why do I have so many fabulous friends who live so far away?

Some of them were in town this weekend, and there was the usual drunkenness and goofing around that happens when I see these guys. I got a group of gay men singing along to "Day Man", ate some good food, had some good conversations, drank too much Goldschlager ... and really, you know it's a good weekend when it involves glow-in-the-dark bubble bath. Trippy. I already miss them all,

I've bought my tickets to visit some more of my fabulous out-of-town friends, the ones out in NYC. I'll be messaging them soon — the ones I haven't yet poked — to let them know of the impending doom err, visit and timing.

In the meantime, my amazing local friends seem to be intent on keeping me busy the next few weekends. Add that to a short story contest I'm participating in, the upcoming NYC trip (which will also include a few days in Cleveland, Ohio) and a couple potential dates in the next seven days (in and of itself is a kind of scary thing), and, well ... this year's kind of shaping up to be an interesting one. Hopefully one with good blogs. Fingers crossed.

At the very least, I haven't cried over my morning ironing in over a week. That's definitely gotta be something.

Tempranillo Hangover

A lot of wine this weekend. Finally hung out with Leonie (from my ceramics class) in a non-classmate function, and I spent most of today with the hangover to prove it.

I don't hit up the Mission often, but last night was a good experience. We started at Fabric8 for an art show reception — her friend Ken has a couple pieces in it, I've seen his work before when Leonie had her birthday party at his house a couple years ago, and if I had a cool $400 lying around I'd seriously consider buying something — most of the rest of the art was kind of typical blasé San Francisco "avant garde" ... meaning that it thinks it's original but still kind of looks the same as everything else. Bonus, however, was the Creme Brûlée Cart parked in the back patio area, which I've heard much of but hadn't come across yet. I give him 4 stars out of 5: I had the basic vanilla flavor (next time I'll have to try the lavender), and it was pretty fantastic, a perfect size, a decent price ... but definitely not the best I've ever had. Pretty high up there, though.

We moved next to Heart, a little wine bar just down the street, and three of us ended up sharing three bottles of Tempranillo. Very nice place, not too pretentious, and they had this amazing BBQ pulled pork slider on the menu that had me melting in my seat.

Got a ride home and stumbled drunkenly through the door at about 1 a.m. I was just ready to pass out when I got a JDate IM from a guy I'd emailed about two or three weeks ago, thanks to my Elsie-challenge. Of course he has to pick the night I'm most incoherent, so I begged off as best I could, and I'm surprised that he still actually wrote me back today. This, plus another guy I've been flirting with via IM (he lives in L.A., though, which is a big ol' minus) have me seriously considering giving JDate one more month's chance. My current subscription expires Tuesday, so I have another day to decide. But it does feel good to flirt again, even if it is pathetically on the internet. Maybe it'll give me the glow and vibe to be able to do it in the real world, too? It's been a long time. Feels nice. Really really nice.